Why You Should Sneak Broccoli into Your Child’s Diet

How many of you were told to eat your broccoli as a child? When my teenage daughter was in kindergarten, she did a Mother’s day project where they answered questions about some of their favorite things to do with mom. One of the questions was, “What is your favorite food to eat with mom?” Most of the kids replied with things like pizza, hamburgers, or ice cream. Not my little girl…she said “Broccoli”. Now I am pretty sure she said that to make me happy, although she did always eat her broccoli. We all know broccoli has many health benefits but it isn’t always easy to get our kids to eat the green little trees. That was how my mom got my brother and I to eat it. We pretended we were giants eating trees. Whatever works…go for it!

The health benefits are well worth playing games with your children to eat it. It contains many nutrients beneficial for overall health like chromium that helps to maintain blood sugars, antioxidants that help guard against free radical damage to cells, and minerals that can aid in preventing osteoporosis. Broccoli is also very high in fiber to help optimize colon health. It contains about 1 gram of fiber for every 10 calories. Along with regulating the colon, the fiber in broccoli also has another very important function, it is a prebiotic. Prebiotics are a class of nutrients that feed the healthy bacteria in our gut flora. We all know it is important to eat foods with probiotics (yogurt, kefir, and fermented foods) but if we don’t include foods and supplements that help your healthy bacteria flourish then we can still get out of balance.

Studies show that broccoli is beneficial for healthy gut flora.(1) The fiber in broccoli isn’t completely digested in our small intestines. The undigested oligosaccharides get fermented in our gut and feed our healthy bacteria.(2) Eating a diet rich in high fiber plant based foods and taking nutritional non-fiber prebiotic-like supplements such as EpiCor has been shown to keep our healthy gut flora in balance.

So how do you get your children to eat more broccoli and develop this lifelong habit? That has been the eternal struggle.

Here are a few suggestions that you might want to try:

Try chopping the broccoli very fine and add it to scrambled eggs or soups. This helps to mix the flavors of other foods with the broccoli to make it more appealing to kids.

Skinny, healthy and delicious savory broccoli cheese muffins are a fun way to increase your intake of vegetables. They're yummy served alongside your favorite soup or salad. Use whatever cheese you prefer or a combination. Parmesan, Cheddar, Swiss, Feta, and Goat are all delicious.

Broccoli is the only vegetable that I &quot;force&quot; my kids to eat. I prepare it steamed, making sure a fork will go through the stem before I serve (overcook broccoli and it's horrible taste and smell). One kid likes the florets, while the other only eats the stalks. I've read that both parts of the vegetable are equally nutritious. I'm banking on broc!